Dear All,
A week or two ago there was some discussion on the value of belonging to
USMA. It started me thinking about my own position on this, so here is my 2
centidollars worth.
USMA membership
Each year it hurts when I have to pay for my membership to the United States
Metric Association (USMA). As the Australian dollar has only been valued at
about 50 cents for the last two years, I have had to pay close to $80.00 for
my membership plus exchange fees and postage. Needless to say, I have
thought long and hard about belonging to the USMA.
These are my reasons why I continue to be a member of the USMA.
The USMA WWW site is a great source of reliable information for me. And I
know that it is reliable because I am confident that (some of ?) my fellow
members are a picky and pedantic lot who would not let any errors linger
there for long.
I enjoy the fact that the USMA is involved in education, such as
participation in science fairs and donations of prizes to high school
students for essays about the metric system, in the USA. This may sound a
little bizarre, coming from someone in faraway Australia, but it is firmly
based on my very selfish belief that Australia will never fully complete the
process of metrication until the USA stops pedalling its archaic measuring
practices around the world, especially in education.
The USMA mailing list is so valuable to me that I feel that I have to
support it financially even if its costs are low due to the voluntary
efforts of my fellow USMA members. I somehow feel that my membership fees
help the morale of these volunteers. I thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to
debate issues with other members either directly or publicly. I also like to
watch as others debate issues that are relevant to their own areas of
expertise and to their own experience.
I use the various channels of communication from the USMA (list, web, and
Metric Today) as a source of metric jokes, stories, USMA campaigns, the
activities of others in the worldwide metric community, for my many metric
speeches and training sessions. And I have found the USMA accreditation
scheme (CMS and CAMS) highly professional and personally satisfying.
The USMA is my best access to accurate information about measurement laws in
the USA, as opposed to the news in the press that has often been filtered
through many (often innumerate) minds. These also include information about
favorable Members of Congress to whom I will offer whatever support I can in
the same way that USMA members have freely offered help and have generously
supported me with my own campaigns.
The USMA gives me access to reasoned (invariably) and passionate
(sometimes) debate on issues relating to SI and metrication � this is
somewhat lacking in the Geelong community. Here, in Geelong � even in metric
Australia there are not many pro�SI activists. My membership of USMA gives
me a sense of community and a sense of belonging that eases my isolation as
an promoter of SI.
Through the USMA I have found and gained direct access to many of the
important players are in the worldwide SI community. The USMA provides me
with an opportunity to test my ideas in a (reasonably) friendly environment.
When these ideas have any success, I am able to share them with other
members. Of course this is a two way process in the collecting and
contributing of SI ideas and stories.
A key feature in all of the above is the information that is provided by
Metric Today. This gives me insight into what the USMA is currently doing,
and it also gives me insight into the USMA's current leadership thinking.
Overall, I believe that one of the most effective things that I can do, as
an Australian, to support continuing metrication in Australia is to belong
to the USMA. I suspect that USMA members, in the USA, have little idea of
the effect that one large influential non-metric nation has on the rest of
the world. The sooner the USA changes its mind about metric the better off
we will all be.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
CAMS - Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
- United States Metric Association
ASM - Accredited Speaking Member
- National Speakers Association of Australia
Member, International Federation for Professional Speakers
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